Why the FRUQ should you be blogging!?

What the FRUQ? What does that mean?

No, I’m not trying to be smart and give you the proverbial finger, it’s a genuine term we’ve recently coined to explain the core structure behind your website’s content.

I’ll come to the anachronism later, but for now I want to give you an imaginary case study, which outlines (in very very basic terms) how Google may perceive your website when comparing you against your competitors.

Let’s say there are two websites, yours and a competitor. Let’s make an assumption that you are both comparably alike, have started around the same time, offer virtually the same services as noted on your website, and to begin with about 10 pages on your website initially.

So in month 1 Google sees you both as a new company, each with 10 pages of content, and will give you a little perk for being a new website.

Let’s suggest that in month 2, your website remains the same with just 10 pages (static in its content provision), whilst your competitor now has 20 pages of content. It’s still early days (month 2) and Google will take in account that you are both starting out, but it will start to favour your competitor in light of the extra content on offer.

Let’s jump ahead to 6 months. Assume that your website still remains at just 10 pages whilst your competitor now has 50 pages. Google will now start to clearly separate the two of you. Your competitor has more content to offer its audiences and therefore Google will consider it a better source of information and rank it higher (for the relevant terms, which you may also be seeking visibility for). Meanwhile you haven’t shown any growth to Google so there’s no real reason for them to push you up the ranks.

Let’s look ahead much further, 1 year. Your competitor now has measurable growth e.g. 100, 200 pages. It doesn’t matter… it just shows growth of the website and signifies to google that there are even more pages of valuable content on offer for its audiences. Google will reward this website with strong ranking positions. As for your business, remaining at 10 pages, it hasn’t shown ANY movement in the last year. For all intents and purposes it might seem right to question if the business is still running… at least that is how Google might see it. In either case, Google is unlikely to rank an outdated website which hasn’t proven it can offer its viewers anything of substance or of a current nature.

So we can see that the activity of adding extra webpages has a measurable impact on the SEO of your website/business. The more your website grows, the more established you become. But the questions is HOW to add more webpages?? Your core service pages won’t change much in a year, so where can we add these extra pages? The answer of course is in a blog!

Now, I appreciate that it’s quite obvious that a blog was the answer to the question, but I wanted to lead you through that hypothetical case study above, as it really does sum up the reasoning WHY to have a blog. So many businesses just assume they need one, but don’t understand the true justification or the benefits it can provide.

Your content is just one element that goes into your SEO performance. (We won’t go into the other elements in this article. You can read more here about Technical SEO, localised SEO, and off page SEO linkbuilding). Likewise I won’t go into the structure of your content or the on page elements that each page should include. For now, I just want to outline the strategy behind your blog and how to use it effectively.

So, I’m going to jump back to the anachronism now. What does FRUQ stand for? It stands for Fresh, regular, unique, quality content.

Understanding the meaning of FRUQ

Fresh

Harping over the same common topics is hardly groundbreaking. Having fresh new ideas, topics, conversational pieces is what makes your content engaging and shareable and these are the things Google picks up on. So make sure your next content article is on trend, with a fresh spin on things.

Regular

An obvious one really, but how regular should you be? Truth is… it’s all down to your own capacity. I’ll tell a secret and show you the most powerful types of websites that have the highest Domain Authority (don’t worry about that term for now if you’re not familiar with it). Those are… news channels. Because they have banks of journalists churning out fresh, new content, regularly (some every hour) this helps with their Domain Authority. So in short… the more you can churn out, the better.

Be unique

It’s simple… don’t plagerise or simply copy another article from another site. I did just tell you to churn out loads of content, but sadly you can’t steal it. Google will recognise the duplicate content, which is kinda in breech of their recommended guidelines, so you have to play fair and write all your own stuff.

Lastly is Quality

The length of your article, the proper grammatical use, the flow of language and synonyms, using paragraphs with sub headings, all play a factor in the quality of the content on offer to the reader. Quality control is just another method from Google to ensure you don’t just churn out 100 new pages, each with just one sentence on it. So make sure you put the time and effort in.

So… whilst you can’t always change your service pages or make them larger, one great area to provide Fresh, Regular, Unique, Quality content… is your blog. So get blogging everyone!!

About Chris Surridge

Chris Surridge is an experienced Digital Marketing Director with a wealth of knowledge on Search Marketing Strategies and Conversion Analysis. His value is in strategic planning for client accounts, and his consultative services.